The Art of Giving Gifts
by 123serendipitee
Summary: Nick learns a lot from Jess about the art of gift giving. Or is it the other way around? Spans season one's "The 23rd", "The Story of the 50", and "Jess and Julia".
1. The Morning of the 23rd

It turned out that sex with Julia was just what the doctor ordered. Beneath the "hard-nosed lawyer" image that she liked to present to the world, she was really just wonderfully insecure and awkward and girlish and, in short, exactly what Nick needed right then. Where Amanda's extreme confidence and aggression had, honestly, scared him to death, he found himself so busy being the one doing the reassuring, with Julia, that he was almost starting to feel like a man again.

And it was nice to feel like a man again. To have someone look at him with eyes softer and more special than she looked at the rest of the world with. To have a head on his shoulder at the movie theater, and fingers shyly lacing their way through his as they walked down the street.

And best of all, Nick had found himself spending a lot less time obsessing stupidly over the possibility of an impossible relationship with a certain roommate of his. And when Jess asked him to help her pick out a Christmas present for Paul, he was surprised to realize that it really didn't bother him a bit.

* * *

After they were done at the mall they dropped Schmidt and Winston off at the gym, as promised. And while they continued to run a few errands, Jess kept messing with that silly plush heart, putting on a dashboard puppet show for him, complete with funny voices. There was even the occasional burst into operatic arias, with the battery-powered beat, beat, beat keeping time.

Nick just laughed at her nonsense, and reflected that he didn't remember the last time he and Jess had had this much fun together.

And then she'd suddenly stopped, mid-vibrato, as if something had just occurred to her. She cocked her head and surveyed Nick curiously.

"What, Jess?! What are you looking at?!"

"Are you ok, Nick? Are you feeling ok?!"

"What? I thought we've been having a good time!" he said defensively.

"We arrrre," she drew out with squinty eyes and a tone of speculation, "That's what's suspicioussss. You haven't yelled at me all afternoon." She began ticking off eyebrow-raising examples on her slender fingers. "You went to as many stores as I wanted to go to without complaining, you didn't say a word when I ended up going back and buying something at the_ first_ store we'd gone into, and now you're laughing at my sophisticated man voice. **You hate that voice**!"

"It's Christmas, Jess," he offered with a grin, "the Grinch's heart always grows twice it's size at Christmas, you know that."

"TWICE my SIZE?!" she made the stuffed heart say with formal dismay, "Why I won't be able to fit into my tuxeeeedo for Neeeew Yeeeears if that is the case."

"WAIT!" she suddenly demanded, being Jess again. "_Are you humming Christmas carols?!"_

He shot her a "you're being ridiculous again" look. "Um...I'm whistling 'Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer'_...through my teeth_, Jess."

But that didn't stop the look of puzzled wonder spreading across her face. "For you, that's the equivalent of humming Christmas carols!" she said marvelingly. And then her eyes and her mouth widened into three O's of shock. "_Oh myyy g-...NICK!_" She sat straight up and punched him in the arm. "WHO IS SHE?!"

"What, I don't know what you're talking about" he demurred evasively. "HEY, are you hungry?! In the mood for ice cream? Let's go get ice cream!"

But she refused to be deterred, and continued accusingly, _"You have a girlfriend!"_

"YOU don't know what you're talking about..." He tried to sound clueless and convincing.

"Nick, don't even try to play coy with me, you know all I'll have to do is check your back when we get out of the car..."

"Well it _is _a little hot in here, and I'm wearing a coat you know..."

"Never mind!" She waved off his excuses dismissively as she spoke with authority now. "I don't need a sweaty back to tell the story! It's all there in the evidence! I just can't believe it's taken me this long to put it together!"

"Okay Jess," he said, still attempting to maintain the appearance of detachment, "just for the sake of entertainment...why don't you compile the evidence for me."

"I'd be GLAD to! So happy you asked!" Jess announced sassily, and eagerly began rattling off the damning clues with fierce clarity. "Number ONE...You've been astonishingly good-humored lately. You just said, 'Cool!' when Schmidt hired an electrician to put a dimmer switch in in the living room the other day, and...OOO! last week! you asked the checker at the grocery store how her baby was doing!"

"...she was pregnant for nine months, and now she isn't, it was hard not to notice..."

Jess was shaking her head wonderingly, "How have I been so stupid. You've even been nice to Paul lately."

"Okay, maybe I misjudged him, I'm willing to admit that..."

But again she refused to be diverted. "_Who is it?" _she demanded.

"Who?!"

"The girl you're in love with."

"I'm NOT in love with anyone, Jess..."

"Your girlfriend..."

"I do NOT have a girlfriend!"

"The girl you're sleeping with."

Nick paused microscopically too long, and Jess hooted gleefully, "A_-HA_! I was_ right_! Nick Miller's been gettin' him a little sumpin' sumpin' on the side! He's got a ho on the down-low!"

He finally just had to give up. "Okay, okay Jess, you got me, but please, let's speak of it with a little more respect than that! I'm not Schmidt, you know! She's a really nice girl, and yeah, we're kinda seeing each other." And darn if it didn't feel kinda nice to finally talk about it to someone.

"Ho HO!" Mr. Sophisticated Heart Man was saying, "He requests that we speak of this lady with_ respect_. And when do we meet the charming young lass?"

"Ehhhh," Nick evaded, "I don't know if we're at that point yet. You know, the 'hey let me introduce you to my world' point. Right now we're still in the 'telling-each-other-as-little-as-possible-in-as-many-grand-sounding-words-as-possible' stage."

"Come COME, young Nick, allow me to council you in matters of the heart! That IS my area of expertise, you know, ho ho!" Jess continued to chortle in her deep cartoony voice, shaking Paul's Christmas present in his face.

"Okay, seriously, Jess," he said, pushing it away, but still laughing in spite of himself. "I totally just answered a question a stuffed toy asked me, and I looked at it the whole time I was talking to it...PUT THAT THING AWAY already!"

_"Thirty seven minutes!" _She announced triumphantly, as she jammed the heart back in its bag.

"What?!"

"It totally just took you _thirty seven minutes _to tell me to put it away, and I was singing OPERA," Jess observed gleefully. "You are IN to her, man!"

"Jess..."

"I'm looking back now," she was reflecting thoughtfully. "So much is making sense. You've been putting on a clean shirt for work every night, and you've been smelling extra good..."

"You go around _smelling me_?!"

"...and I think you've even been handsomer lately. You've been sitting straighter...not walking hunched over like a chimp as much...and I can't even remember the last time I saw the turtle face. Ok...well..." she threw up her hands in exasperation and rolled her eyes, "_right now_...so you had to go and prove me wrong and make the turtle face _right now..._but before that..."

"A _chimp_?!" he was demanding resentfully.

But she ignored him and cooed, "Nicholas, I'm so happy for youuuu! Now introduce us to this bitch so I can tell you whether she's good enough for you or not!"

"Um, yeah, no, that's not going to happen any time soon."

"Why not?!"

"I told you, we're not ready for our worlds to collide, yet."

"Too busy 'colliding' other things huh, wink wink, nudge nudge," she said in one of her voices.

"Okay, if the jar was around right now, I'd make you make a donation," Nick said. But he was smiling. He couldn't seem to stop smiling.

She was right. Life _had _seemed a little more worth living lately, since Julia had come on the scene. He wasn't sure where things with her were headed, but he was having fun finding out.

Plus, Jess had just told him that he'd been looking handsome lately. And smelling good. And that a girl needed to be good enough for _him_, and not the other way around.

Yes, life was good at the moment.

He'd just ignore the part about the chimp.


	2. The Early Morning of the 24th

Dating Julia had even made it easier to put up with the presence of Paul Genslinger in his life. And finding out that Jess wasn't in love with the guy had rendered him positively likable. So Nick was actually sincerely sorry when the two ended up splitting up, and was surprised to realize that he'd miss seeing the guy around.

Harmless, eager little pup that he was.

So when Jess had seemed quiet and sad and contemplative after Schmidt's office party, Nick had found himself wishing that there was something he could do to cheer her up.

You know, just to make up for his role in their premature breakup, that's all. Totally not for any other reason. Definitely not because he'd been secretly dreading getting on a plane and spending Christmas away from her, or anything.

And magically, like a Christmas miracle, it had come to him. To HIM, Nick Miller, who never did anything right, and who _definitely _never did gifts right.

_**Candy Cane Lane.**_

The perfect thing to put a smile back on her face, and that light back in her eyes. That light that he used to scoff at but had grown to love. That light that reflected the world around her as a much brighter and nicer place than it really was.

Because if a person couldn't have that naive light in their eyes at Christmas, then dammit, when could they.

So he'd turned the car around, oblivious to the protests of his friends, and the certain knowledge that his Ma was going to make him pay for this. OH, would she make him pay.

But sadly, when they got there, it was too late. Candy Cane Lane was as dark and lifeless as Jess's eyes had been half the night, and for a minute or two, in true Nick fashion, he'd just accepted that. Just rolled over, laid down, and accepted that once again, this just served to prove, life _wasn't_ light and life. Accepted that life, in fact, sucked, and he sucked at life. Accepted that yet again, Nick Miller was a screw up who couldn't do anything right, even when he had the best of intentions.

His own fatalistic sense of failure was familiar and almost comforting in its predictability. But it was hearing_ Jess _speaking with uncharacteristic pessimism and defeat that had snapped him out of it. "I have the worst timing," she'd bemoaned quietly. "Always in the wrong place at the wrong time."

And Nick knew that in that moment she was thinking about everything from the horrible timing of her ill-fated strip-tease for Spencer, to the apparently UN-synced emotional clocks between her and Paul. And suddenly letting the evening end without seeing Jess's face glow with her patented brand of misguided optimism again was unthinkable.

And so, he'd started to yell.

Funny how easy it was to shake a defiant fist in the face of failure, when it was Jess he was fighting for.

And yeah, maybe he was a little more belligerent about it than he could have or should have been, but hey, he wasn't really used to doing this kind of thing. You know, this making-himself-look-like-an-idiot-for-a-friend kinda thing. And anyway, it didn't matter in the end, because it WORKED. Crazily enough, it worked. One by one the lights and sounds of Candy Cane Lane had come back to life.

And he'd watched his friends' smiles of disbelief and jubilation, and listened to their laughter and the love in their voices when they wished each other Merry Christmas, and he knew that he'd given them _all _a gift that night.

But most importantly, Jess was alight with the magic around them, and for once, he felt like her eyes were reflecting things accurately. That the world around them _was _a truly good and magical place at that moment.

Nick Miller had finally done something right. Something really, really, truly, good, and pretty epically right.

Now if he could just explain that, somehow, to his Ma.


	3. After the 50

"A female roommate, huh?! How should I feel about that?! Please tell me she has a lazy eye, and rarely shaves her legs," Julia teased him, over dessert at Nick's favorite little diner.

Nick smiled reflexively, "I'm not gonna lie, she's a beautiful girl."

Julia frowned at him, a mock-jealous frown, because their relationship didn't warrant a real-jealous frown at that point. You know...the whole "not labeling things" thing that they had going on. But he could sense her natural curiosity and wariness.

"Jess is a great girl," he said. "Really, you'd like her, she's one of the nicest most positive people you could ever imagine meeting. Not the fake kind of happy that some people put on. She's the real deal. Like, really, stupidly, ignorantly, blissfully happy and just...kind."

Julia's eyes had narrowed. "And?"

"And, she's one of my best friends." Even Nick was surprised to hear those words come out of his mouth, but as he said it, he realized it was true. How quickly Jess had become so important in his life. Maybe she hadn't been around as long as Winston and Schmidt had, but Nick hoped that she eventually _would _be. Because to be honest, now that she _was _in his life, he couldn't imagine his life without her.

Or maybe he could, but just didn't want to.

"**And?!" **Julia's look was arch, now, his quiet little moment of introspection not going unnoticed.

"AND, she's also a goofy nut, and can work your final nerve down to its last frayed thread, and sometimes I seriously suspect that she's from outer space."

Julia relaxed a bit now, to teasingly prompt, "_And?!"_

"Aaaand...and?...and absolutely nothing has gone on between us?"

"THERE you go!" Julia smiled, rewarding him for coming up with the desired response by feeding him a spoonful of her blueberry cobbler.

Nick hated blueberries. Like, really, irrationally, hated them. Even Jess knew that. But he gritted his teeth, and swallowed the bite, and smiled at the girl across the table.

Because she was pretty okay, too.

Then he took a deep breath and said, "So...you ready to meet them all?"

* * *

Introducing Julia to his friends...to his life...was nerve-wracking. Nick didn't know how she would take them, or, for that matter, how they would take her. She really could be a bitch sometimes, and he didn't know if she'd let them see the other side of her. The side that it sometimes seemed she only let_ him _see. The softer side...the vulnerable one...the side that wasn't afraid to_ not _be perfect.

So when Winston asked her to join them in celebrating Schmidt's birthday, it had really honestly seemed like the Worst Idea Ever. As if the four roommates weren't already rocking their own individual brands of crazy at it was, Schmidt's extended social circle was the dirty under-belly of life in the loft, and one that the rest of them tolerated only out of love for Schmidt.

However, in the end, it became clear that he shouldn't have worried. Julia had been totally cool throughout the entire insane evening, and her own display of crazy in the end (punching out that D-bag Benjamin) had sealed her acceptance into their dysfunctional little family.

She'd even brought some light-hearted legal humor to the matter of settling the $50, while cuddling with him on the couch, wearing his clothes, and seeming to fit in just fine.

So fine that now that Nick could stop worrying about her, he finally got the chance to stop and reflect on just how epic the night had been.

Jess had been...remarkable. Just remarkable. No doubt about it. He'd been so distracted lately that he hadn't really been noticing or appreciating all the time and effort she had been putting into planning this thing.

And then to pull it off the way she had, playing the hostess role effortlessly when he knew that she was actually feeling completely out of her element in that particular crowd...well, Nick found himself feeling kinda crazily proud of her, and humbled by what an amazing friend she continually proved herself to be...to all of them.

And after Julia had left, he'd found himself wandering rather aimlessly around the loft, as if looking for something that he didn't even realize he was looking for.

He found it up on the roof, in a lounge chair, taking a cat nap under a blanket.

"Hey Jess...whatcha doin' up here?"

She answered with a helpless but happy little yawn, "Oh, just enjoying the sun and fresh air, and snoozing a bit. Julia gone?"

"Yeah, she had work."

"She was nice, Nick. I mean...I'm sorry I didn't get to talk to her much, but she seemed nice."

"Hey, _no_, no worries, you were really busy all night."

Jess rolled her eyes and giggled a bit, "Oh my goooosh. A night to go down in infamy, huh?! What a disaster."

"Are you kidding?! It was amazing. YOU were amazing."

She cocked a sleepy, ruffled head at him. "You really think so? I tried really hard..." She trailed off uncertainly.

"HECK yeah. In fact, I've been thinking. I know it was fun to give him a bad time and everything...but don't be too hard on Schmidt. I mean, for the whole trying to kiss you thing. Cuz if someone had done something like that for me, I probably would have been hopelessly in love with them before the night was over."

She turned her face to the sun and simultaneously snuggled a bit more against the chill of the breeze. "I just wanted him to have a happy birthday", she shrugged.

"I know, but Jess...that was...that was...really, _really _nice of you. Like, over and above the call of duty, nice. There aren't many people in this world who would do something like that for a friend."

She suddenly shot him a sharp look out of the side of her eyes, and said, "You did."

Nick was baffled. "Huh?"

"You did. For me."

"Wh..." he was still clueless. "_Huh_?!"

"That's what gave me the idea. Because I knew how much it meant when you did it for me."

He was just speechlessly confused now, and she finally rolled her eyes and explained, "Candy Cane Lane, silly."

"Candy Cane...?! Come on Jess, the two hardly compare!"

"Exactly the same thing, " she disagreed succinctly. " I had my heart set on something, and it wasn't going to happen. When you saw that I was upset and depressed, you decided to MAKE it happen for me. And the fact that you had to MAKE it happen, made it mean even more. See. Same thing."

"Jess," Nick was touched but excruciatingly humbled and embarrassed, "I know how much time and planning and money you must have had to put into this. Candy Cane Lane was just a spur of the moment impulse, and didn't cost me a thing."

She sat up now, wide awake, and pulled the blanket around her shoulders as she faced him earnestly. "It cost you your_ plane ticket_, Nick. But it was much more than that. You couldn't have cared less about looking at Christmas lights, but you knew how much it would mean to me. Then you went out of your comfort zone, and heck, risked getting arrested, to get them turned back on for me. It was the nicest thing that anyone's ever done for me in my life, and yes, if you want to know the truth, I think it did make me fall in love with you a little bit that night."

But she was standing to leave, and her whimsical smile and wrinkled nose was taking the weight out of those words, and she merely patted his shoulder as she walked past him. "Come on, let's go back in...it's chilly up here."

He stood rooted to his spot for several long seconds, before finally finding himself able to trail after her. And if he was a little unsteady on his feet as he did so, he told himself it was just lack of sleep, and the morning-after effects of bro-juice.

Nothing more.


	4. Jess and Julia

Unfortunately, after a promising start, it seemed that Jess and Julia had, in the mysterious way of girls, decided_ not _to like each other, after all.

And that made things a little awkward, since they were currently the two most important women in Nick's life.

Well...them, and his Ma. He guessed his Ma would have to fit on that totem of priority somewhere.

And he frowned to realize that while he could only picture Julia and his mother making painfully polite conversation over a restaurant table, he could totally picture Jess and his Mama in the kitchen, cooking and making a huge mess together, and chattering non-stop, mostly about him.

He shook his head to clear that thought. No, absolutely best NOT to drag his Ma into this mess. Thank goodness she was back in Chicago. Because this was confusing enough already.

This irrational dislike the two girls had seemed to form for each other.

It bothered him enough to talk to Winston about it.

"What's going on with these girls?! One day they were getting along fine, and the next day they couldn't stand the sight of each other."

"You really don't get it, do you?!" Winston asked, incredulously.

"NO! I don't! They're actually a lot alike, if you want to know the truth. I mean, not at first glance, but once you get to know Julia...she's a lot more like Jess than you'd think. The way she says things sometimes sounds just_ like _Jess.."

"_Are you even listening to yourself _right now, man?!"

"Yes, what's your point?!"

Winston just shook his head and walked away, "I'ma let you figure this one out for yourself, dude."

So yeah, Winston was no help.

And just about the time Nick thought that it was all over...that he'd blown the whole, good, non-label-y-with-the-promise-of-who-knew-what thing that he and Julia had going on...he got home from work one night, and there she was, camped out on the couch, doing something girly and artsy-craftsy with Jess and her friends.

No, he never would, ever could, understand women.

Because in the next wonderful moment, Julia was telling him that she didn't want to date anyone else, that she only wanted to date him, and the cool thing was, he felt the same way. And he kissed her, and told her that. That there was no one else he'd rather be with, these days.

_Well, no one else that was a truly viable option, anyway._

Around the time that Nick heard Cece and Sadie leaving the apartment, he found that he was suddenly thirsty.

"I'm going to the kitchen for a minute Julia...can I bring you anything?"

"No, but is it ok if I grab a quick shower?" She stood, and flirtatiously touched the tip of her nose to his.

"_No_, sure," Nick said agreeably, "whatever you need, you know that."

And she set her lips next to his ear, touching without quite touching, and whispered, "What I need is _you_. So I'll meet you back here soon, hmmm?!"

And Nick agreed enthusiastically...they'd been making out intermittently for the past hour, and he was more than ready to make it official. You know. Their first fuck as newly monogamous fuckers.

Or whatever they weren't calling it now.

But first, he found, he really wanted to say goodnight to Jess.

She was rolling up balls of yarn and jabbing them rather aggressively with long needles when he walked in, and he heard her sigh rather sadly before she looked up and saw him.

"Oh...Nick! You scared me. How...how did everything work out with Julia? You kids ok, in there?"

He felt the strangest urge to hug her, and so he folded his arms across his chest and stood near her, awkwardly, as she picked up a particularly hopeless looking wad of yarn and sniffed as she dangled it at him ruefully. "Julia."

"Jess," he finally said in a low voice, "Thank you."

"For what?" she asked, neutrally, busying her hands, and not meeting his eyes.

"For...what you did tonight. For giving Julia another chance. I have a feeling she said some...you know...not very nice things to you. So you didn't have to do this...this..." he waved his hands around the recent crafting area, "this, whatever this was. You know. Including her in your girl stuff. Trying to be friends with her. That was really nice of you to do for her."

And now Jess was looking him straight in the eye, standing just a few feet away from him, her body completely squared off with his as she surveyed him with that unnervingly direct look she could have when she was being serious. And she said, firmly, unerringly, "I didn't do it for her, Nick."

"What...what do you mean?"

"I didn't do it for her. You're right. She was mean to me. I really had no desire to be friends with her."

"Then why did you...?"

"For you, Nick. I did it for you."

He was speechless for a second or two, and her attention seemingly slid back to the night's disastrous projects, as she held one up with a sigh, "You know, it always seems like a good idea in theory. But the actual execution is where the trouble always sets in."

"Jess," he finally found his tongue, "Why would you do that? After...after the way_ I _acted about Paul, why...why would you do that for me?"

She didn't look at him again, nor did she pause in her gathering of skeins, but her voice was still low and earnest when she replied, "Nick, haven't you ever given a friend a gift before, not because they deserved it, but just because you loved them, and wanted them to be happy?"

And if her arms hadn't been full now, and his hands hadn't been tucked firmly into his armpits, this might have been the perfect moment for that hug. But he didn't have time to figure out the logistics involved in bypassing those impediments while he was so busy fighting a tide pool of emotion, and before he knew it, she was telling him huskily, "Be happy, Nick," and disappearing towards her room with her arms full of tangled yarn, uncooperative needles, and derailed dreams.

* * *

"Nick, I'm really sorry, I was wrong about Jess."

"Seriously? We're going to have this conversation right now?" Julia was in his bed, and he was humping her leg and kissing along her jawline, and trying really hard not to think about Jess. So this wasn't helping.

"You were right...she really is genuinely nice and sweet."

He froze mid-hump. "Okay, so we're talking about this."

"I don't know why...maybe because you know how insecure I am...but I just had this weird idea in my head that she liked you, for some reason."

"Wh-what on earth would make you think that?" Nick wanted to know. _He really wanted to know.  
_  
"I don't know, just a girl thing, I guess. Something about the way she says your name. The way she's always happier to see you than she is to see anyone else. The way her eyes light up when she talks about you, and she always sounds like she's so proud of you."

"I think...I think you just imagined all that," Nick muttered, and pretended to nuzzle her cheek, to cover for the fact that he really, more than anything, wanted her to keep going.

She didn't.

"But I get it now, you've just got this whole brother/sister thing going on. That's cool. I can live with that." She smiled teasingly at him, and poked him in the ribs a bit.

He evaded her eyes again by nibbling at her ear, which he knew always made her giggle and flinch, and asked, "Julia?"

"Hmmm?"

"Are you done talking about Jess?"

"I don't knooow," she drawled, "Kiss me a little lower, while I think about it."

He slid his lips down to tongue a spot on her neck that he knew always got her panties wet, and she breathed out shakily, "I think...I think...I definitely think...so..."

"Good," he said, rising above her, "Because I am too."

Done talking about Jess, that was. Not done thinking about her.

_Definitely not done thinking about her._


End file.
